Agatha (mary clarissa) christie

1890 – 1976

Dame Agatha Christie was a brilliant writer of detective prose. The 'Golden Age of detective fiction' in English literature (1920s— 1930s) is connected with her name.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (written in 1915 and published in 1920), introduced the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, whose fictional career extended through many books to Curtain (1975). His character was suggested by many Belgian refugees flooding into England in 1914. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) introduced the shrewd, gentle Miss Marple, whose fictional career rivalled Poirot's in length and popularity, ending with Sleeping Murder (1976). Other detective heroes (Superintendent Battle, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) proved less durable.

Agatha Christie's classic books, famous for their tantalizing ingenuity of plot – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Peril at End House (1932), Lord Edgeware Dies (1933), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934), The ABC Murders (1936), Death on the Nile (1937), Murder in Mesopotamia (1938) and Ten Little Niggers (1939) — prove that she became the queen of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. Christie's popularity owes much to her power of observation, deep knowledge of psychology and understanding of underlying motives of person's actions as well as to her artistic manner of setting the story as a game with the reader, making the reader a participant in the process of puzzling out the crime.

Agatha Christie is the author of 12 plays written for the theatre. Of the several short stories Agatha Christie adapted for the stage The Mousetrap (first produced in 1952) and Witness for the Prosecution (first produced in 1953) were prodigiously successful. She also wrote light romantic and sentimental novels using the pen-name Mary Westmacott. Awarded by the honourable degree for literature and orders of the British Empire, in her personal life she remained shy all her life and didn't like to be photographed.

Periodization

The period from the second half of the 1930s — till the 1980s is often called 'mid-twentieth century'. For most writers in the thirties the struggle was that for a juster society in England and against Fascism in the international aspect. The thirties was a 'political decade' for British intellectuals.

The literature of the forties, a grim decade, reflected their numerous important events, in 1945 after World War II the Conservatives under Churchill lost the general election. The first majority Labour government had to face unemployment within the country and the beginning of the crash of colonial system in the world. In conditions of economic hardship, the consequences of the war, Britain had to rebuild itself.

The fifties are estimated by British scholars 'as the time of economic stability and almost full employment. But the sense of diminished status in the world the English had after the loss of their colonies produced anger and fear. The anxiety and tension of the fifties reflected in the fiction of the period. England became influenced by the United States. Together with the beginning of the television era in 1956 this had a tremendous impact on cultural process and coincided with the abandonment of many traditional values and mores, the growth of more materialistic attitudes and the change of moral principles: in 1957 homosexualism in England was no longer a crime, in 1959 Penguin Books won the right to publish D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover which had been prosecuted for obscenity. Both these events signaled the beginning of the permissive hedonistic morale.

The sixties were marked with protests against the Vietnam war merged with outpouring of frivolous and fashionable creativity of the cosmopolitan society, a lack of sexual restraint, and the so-called 'drug culture'. Music of the Beatles became hugely influential with the young.

Long traditions of Realism, always strong in English literature, found their further development in the works of John B. Priestley, Charles P. Snow and the “Angry Young Men”. In the writings of Evelyn Waugh and P.O. Wodehouse they were combined with no less important English satirical tradition.

New trends in the English literature of the second half of the 20th century are connected with the Feminism and Existentialism.

Feminism, the reform movement in England and the USA, which aimed at the social, educational and political equality of women with men achieved a new dynamic in the 1960s with the creation of the National Organisation for Women in the USA. Feminist literary criticism, a critical approach which acquired a distinct identity in the late 1960s and 1970s, seeks to re-examine women's literature of the past and present from a feminist point of view, looking closely at such things as female and male stereotypes in literature and the socio-economic situation of women authors. A number of British women writers of the day were very popular, among them Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Susan Hill, Doris Lessing.

Existentialism is a term used to describe some loosely connected philosophical ideas which assert the unique and the particular in human experience and the ability of the individual to be what he or she chooses to be. Existentialists such as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980) believed we cannot escape responsibility for our character and actions by referring to external standards beyond our control. The influential play Waiting for Godot (first published in French in 1952) by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett interprets the human condition, humorously and wittily, as one of delusion and paralysis. A question of Existentialist ideas which lies behind the play leads to a belief in man's solitude and his essential lack of mastery over his own life. The trend had a considerable impact on the English literature of the end of the 20th century, especially on the works of Iris Murdoch.

George Orwell (1903—1950) thought of himself as being on the political left though he never joined any political party. His novels include Homage to Catalonia (1938), about his experiences in Spain, and Animal Farm (1945), a satirical fable about Stalin's Russia. Orwell's novel “1984” (written in 1948) presents a gloomy imaginary grotesque world under a Stalinist-style dictatorship. Although both Animal Farm and 1984 touched t nerve of the wider public in Britain and the USA, it has been suggested that Orwell put his own personal fears and his self-hatred into a vision of the world around him.

«1984»

Orwell sets his story in war-torn London.  Thirty to forty bombs rain down on the city per week and everywhere Winston turns reminders of the war, such as the Two Minutes Hate and billboards plastered with Party slogans, color his existence.  Deprivation, another bi-product of war, hangs in the air as heavily as the horrible grime and stench created by the city's overcrowded tenements.  Upon opening 1984, Orwell's first readers, English people during the late 1940s, would have immediately recognized themselves.  Having just emerged from WWII, Londoners would have intimately related to the deprivation and destruction portrayed in 1984. 

However, while Winston placed full blame for his situation on the shoulders of Big Brother, Londoners would not have identified the cause of their misery as the British government.  More likely, the British would have blamed Nazi Germany for starting the war and causing such chaos and devastation.  Winston's rebellion against Big Brother would have resonated with contemporary audiences because they too had recently struggled to defeat the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  While it is difficult to pinpoint the specific sparks that set off WWII, the people fighting in the Allied armies must clearly have believed that their collective mission was to crush totalitarianism and restore democracy around the world.  Given this context, 1984's political messages emerge unmistakably clear. 

The Party is a totalitarian government.  Neither the Outer Party nor the proles (proletariat) have any influence on the direction of their country or the rules that govern their lives.  The Inner Party manipulates the media and infiltrates citizens' private lives to gain complete control over every aspect of human existence, including love and sex.  When the propaganda, deprivation, and rigid guidelines fail to convert someone to Party doctrine (INGSOC), the government uses torture to brainwash citizens.  The fact that the Party must turn Winston into a walking zombie to finally crush his inner-revolt, reveals the Party's ultimate frailty.  Since the principles of INGSOC fail to inspire thinking people like Winston, the Party has no choice but to use extreme force and coercion to stay in power.  Orwell calls upon his readers to recognize the evil and frailty of the Party and fight to prevent the spread of totalitarianism.  While Orwell does not advocate for a specific alternative system, undercurrents of Socialism, Democracy, and Capitalism pervade. 

            "History" is another important theme in 1984.  In many ways, Orwell's novel reads like a history book.  1984warns readers that the Oceania universe will be the future, if people fail to learn the lessons revealed by major historical events and figures such as WWI, WWII, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini (to cite examples from Western and Eastern Europe).  The Party understood the power of history.  A citizenry educated to understand history would not allow the Party to survive.  Thus, the Party eliminated nearly everyone who remembered the past before Big Brother, created a new, post-Big Brother history, then manipulated history through the Ministry of Truth so much that it was impossible to ever know what was happening or what had really happened. 

It is ironic that Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth, changing historical facts to suit the Party.  In a small way, Winston contributed to the collective amnesia that plagued Oceania, maintained order, and secured his own powerlessness.  However, had Winston not worked in the Ministry of Truth, he would not have gotten the proof he needed to validate his subconscious and unconscious misgivings about the Party.  In fact, had it not been for several articles about past rebels that crossed his desk, Winston's internal rage would never have solidified into outward rebellion.  It is also telling that Winston's commits his first act of rebellion by writing in a diary.  The act of recording his present circumstances constituted extreme disloyalty to the Party because Winston was actually documenting history.  Totalitarian rulers throughout history, including Hitler and Pol Pot (the leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia), destroyed books and exterminated journalists and intellectuals because they understood the power of documentation and history.  While Orwell clearly shows that history is mutable, he also proves that this type of mutation leads to the death of culture and freedom.